NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have gained enormous popularity in the cryptocurrency world. Since they are tokenized digital assets stored on a blockchain, they cannot be copied. Unlike conventional cryptos like Bitcoin, where there isn’t a significant distinction between Bitcoins, these tokens can be distinct from one another.
NFTs’ selling points are their rarity and how simple it is to demonstrate their uniqueness. Despite having a maximum quantity of 21 million coins, scarcity is another factor that influences the price of bitcoin. However, it is significantly more well-liked than any one NFT.
NFTs were so well-liked in 2017 that they brought Ethereum to a complete stop due to extreme network congestion. CryptoKitties, an Ethereum game where players can purchase, sell, breed, and collect NFT kittens, served as the primary driving force behind this. One of the most prosperous businesses in the NFT sector today, Dapper Labs, is the creator of CryptoKitties.
Dapper Labs didn’t wait for Ethereum to scale before attempting to address the issue that CryptoKitties sparked. Instead, it began creating a blockchain specifically for the technology it wished to develop, luring developers to assist in creating an ecosystem around it. Dapper Labs eventually unveiled its own blockchain, Flow, a few years after the CryptoKitty network collapse.
What is Flow
In comparison to many other altcoins, flow is the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain that shares its name. Eventually, it will serve as a governance token for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), allowing users to control the network’s direction.
By staking the cryptocurrency using network-based validator nodes, users protect the Flow network and carry out transactions. To encourage network involvement, they receive interest and transaction fees based on their share.
This approach is comparable to the widely used proof of stake consensus mechanism. In order to enhance transaction throughput, Ethereum wants to implement proof of stake with sharding, which involves splitting the network horizontally into shards.
The Flow blockchain is similarly divided into several sections and superficially resembles the future Ethereum version, but there are several significant distinctions. Flow divides validator nodes vertically into 4 different responsibilities as opposed to sharding.
Nodes won’t take part in validating every transaction on a shared blockchain. Without additional safeguards, this indicates that attackers could harm the network by seizing control of a smaller number of network nodes.
By distributing transactions among nodes at random, Ethereum intends to circumvent this problem by making such an assault too unexpected to be successful. By requiring that all nodes contribute to the validation of each transaction, even if each one just completes a quarter of the process, Flow seeks to totally eliminate this issue.
Because decentralized application (DApp) developers can simply incorporate the token onto their platforms, Flow offers a wide range of uses beyond simple usefulness. Flow is a blockchain-based platform that can be used by games and other platforms of any kind to buy in-game products, send money between players, earn awards, and do much more.
NBA Top Shot is currently among the Flow platforms with the highest usage rates. With Flow, you can purchase packs of NFTs that represent officially licensed clips from NBA games. Although CryptoKitties has not yet migrated to Flow, Dapper Labs claims that work on the change is ongoing.
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